Thursday, October 31, 2013

So sorry -- apologies matter -- Oct. 31, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the health exchange website
debacle, Washington has moved through denial, anger and finger pointing. Now
we’ve hit the apology stage.

On Wednesday, Kathleen Sebelius, the
secretary of health and human services, called the online marketplace where
people were supposed to be able to compare and buy insurance easily starting
Oct. 1 “a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans.”

“You deserve better,” she said at a
House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. “I apologize.”

And when the terrier from Tennessee,
Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, snapped at Sebelius, asking who was
responsible for the mess, Sebelius said, “Hold me accountable for the debacle.
I’m responsible.”

A day earlier, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator
of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for
setting up the online marketplaces, also apologized.

“To the millions of Americans who’ve
attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health care coverage, I
want to apologize to you that the Web site has not worked as well as it
should,” Tavenner said at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

President Barack Obama, while stopping
short of an actual apology, has said “nobody is madder than me.” He apparently can’t
brake for pronouns at a time like this.

Seriously, the president must be mad
at himself for letting this fiasco befall his signature legislative achievement.
It’s his legacy at stake. Obama struck a confident note Wednesday in Boston,
insisting that the rollout problems are solvable. A lot is riding on whether the
website is running smoothly Nov. 30, as promised,

In his speech at Faneuil Hall, Obama
sought to clear up confusion about his oft-repeated promise that people could
keep their insurance under the new system. Some people who buy health insurance
on the individual market have received cancellation notices. Obama explained
that a few policies fail to meet consumer protection standards in the health
law, but the people will be eligible for better coverage and possibly for
premium subsidies.

Typically, embattled public figures
follow the old legal advice to doctors facing malpractice claims: “Defend and
deny.” Testifying before Congress, the lawyered-up contractors who engineered
the troubled marketplace avoided showing even a smidgen of remorse.

When a top-level public servant like
Sibelius has the wit to apologize and sound sincere, she conveys the sense that
she gets it, that she knows real people are being hurt by her agency’s ineptitude.

Don’t get me wrong. An apology – many
apologies -- from Washington won’t shorten anyone’s wait on HealthCare.gov or pay
the insurance premium. People want results; they want their government to work.

At the same time, though, people should
realize that Obamacare is a moving political target.

“We did not wage this long and contentious
battle just around a website,” the president says. As rocky as the rollout of
the exchanges has been, the president insists, the Affordable Care Act is
already working to make insurance more readily available and affordable. That,
of course, won’t satisfy the law’s foes.

Obama repeatedly says he’ll work
with anyone who wants to fix the law, but congressional Republicans have no
interest in mending it. If it’s not the website, it’s the canceled policies or the
cost of premiums or something else. The GOP needs to be accountable too.

Where,Republicans, is your
long-promised alternative to the health law? Let us see it – or help fix what’s
broken.

A president saves his apologies for
big moments. Obama reportedly apologized to irate
German Chancellor Angela Merkel after news broke that the United States had been
listening to her phone calls for years. He apologized
Oct. 8, during the government shutdown, for the unfolding fiscal dramas in
Washington.

“To all the American people: I
apologize,” he said, but he couldn’t resist turning the apology into a rebuke,
saying what he needs to do is to break his foes of their bad habits in
negotiations.

Speaking of apologies, I’ve yet to
see tea party Republicans apologize for shutting down the government or sending
the world’s blood pressure sky high with games over raising the debt ceiling.

An apology is not a solution, but it
is a start. It takes guts to say you’re sorry. Who’ll be next?